Chinese Civil War
Chinese civil war It was fought between Kuomintang and the Communist Party. The leaders of the two different parties were Chiang Kai Shek and Mao Zedong. The Kuomintang party was a very corrupt party, all the generals were very corrupt and pocketed some of the money they were supposed to use to help their own country develop. The war started in 1926. It officially ended in 1949 with the Communists defeating their opponents. Background The Qing dynasty had collapsed in 1911, this left China unruled. Sun Yat Sen had merged both parties KMT and CPC. AT that time, China was a very huge but poor country- most of the people lived in poverty. Which was why Sun Yat Sen had tried to ask the US for aid but help did not come. In 1921 he asked for Soviet help, which they did pledge to help. But he died in 1925. Right after he died, a power struggle began. Chiang Kai Shek then took control as a leader of the Kuomintang party because he was the leader of the National Revolution Party, an army of China. At that time there was a warlord period, which warlords ruled over several small states. Chiang Kai Shek then allied himself with several warlords which was why Mao Zedong said he broke the rules of Sun Yat Sen. This was because Sun Yat Sen wanted one government, one united government without any wars. After a few months (after the conflict between Mao and Chiang) Chiang and other councilors said that communism was disruptive and they decided to ban it in Shanghai. The Kuomintang party then started to root out all CPC members in Shanghai and killed at least 3000 of them. This was known as the Shanghai Massacre and was also the split between Communism and KMT. The Communist Party in the 1920’s went underground. When the CPC had fully fermented, it started the Nanchang uprising. The Nanchang Uprising was a peasant uprising. The peasants caused a war to capture the cty of Nanchang. They succeeded and established a Communist base there. He Lou and Zhou Enlai led the rebellion. This day was August 1st, later called the anniversary of the founding of People’s Liberation Party. This uprising lead to the start of the ten years civil war- the Central Plains War. Chiang Kai Shek had the support of USA and Mao Zedong the support of Russia. The war officially started in 1930, the Central Plains War started out as an internal conflict within the Kuomintang party, the attention was then turned to Communist uprising, the Kuomintang party was trying to root out the remaining pockets of Communism through a series of encirclement siege campaigns in Jiangxi, Hunan, Hubei and Sichuan. The Kuomintang party’s first few campaigns into the heart of the Communist party region had failed due to the vast area of China so they were unable to establish their foothold in. They then made their fifth campaign which was to surround the Communist region with blockhouses to prevent them from getting supplies. The Communist Party easily thwarted them in this by taking advantage of the blockhouses gaps and then invading inside each and everyone. Whilst Mao’s section of the Communist party was enforcing this, Zhao Guotao’s (the founder of Communism) army was attacking the KMT head on. Also known as the Long March. This retreat away from KMT forces was about 25,000 Li (125,000km). Because of this defeat, (even though Zhao was a founding member of the Communist party) Mao Zedong became the supreme leader of the Communist party. But although the Long March cost the Communist forces most of their troops, it was worth it for them. It showed them how weak the KMT party was because it couldn’t encircle them at all but also made Mao the supreme leader of the CPC party and also gave the Communist forces time to recover and recuperate. And when Mao Zedong passed a law saying not to disrespect or treat the rural peasant with any harm, it won the trust over the peasants and ultimately lead to his trump card. Sino-Chinese War Chiang Kai Shek, the leader of the Kuomintang party refused to ally his army temporarily with the Communist party to fight a much greater threat, the Japanese. So then, two other main leaders in the Kuomintang (Zhang Xueliang & Yue Hucheng) kidnapped Chiang Kai Shek and forced him to ally with Communist Party. The two forces established a Second United Front. In general, the Sino-Chinese war was one of the reasons why the Communists eventually won. The CPC occupied large areas of China from 1937 to 1945 and also exploited the Manchuria when Soviet forces defeated the Japanese there. The War of Liberation It first began with the Japanese troops staying in Manchuria. The KMT party did not have enough time to collect the Japanese for their own army since they had no-one stationed there at the time. This had then lead on to a full scale war in the Northeast. The way they learned was in 1946, part of Chiang Kai Shek’s Red army stayed in Manchuria and joined the Communist party, this sparked a battle for the Northeast of China. Although the Communist party captured large amounts of weaponry from the Japanese but did not know how to use. The main advantage the Communist Party had was their promise of reformed policy. This policy attracted a lot of the peasants and poor into their team, which allowed them to use huge amounts of manpower against the Kuomintang party. In 1946, the Communist suffered a massive defeat, the Kuomintang party had captured the city of Yenan, but the even more unlucky Kuomintang lost several cities in the North to the Communist. Even the best KMT army had to surrender to Communist forces when the army was situated in Changchun which the Communists lay siege to. Each capture of KMT forces supplied the Communists with large supplies of weapons and artillery. The Huaihai campaign secured east central China for the Communists. At the end, the KMT forces were stranded in the middle of the mountains without food or water due to heavy snowfalls, also the air units could not support the ground troops because of this. The funny thing is that at the end, the Communist Party troops enticed the KMT with food, the loss of the Whampoa KMT forces which was one of Chiang Kai Shek’s main troops forced his political position to greatly weaken. Therefore his political rivals forced him to resign 10 days later. Also president Harry Truman of the USA lost faith in him and never negotiated with him again. On April 21st Communist forces crossed the Yangtze river and captured Nanjing, capital of Kuomintang which ended the three year war. Aftermath Mao Zedong established the PRC, People’s Republic of China and made the capital Peiping (renamed Beijing). Chiang Kai Shek fled to Taiwan with a few KMT forces as well. Chiang Kai Shek established his own government in Taiwan. The Communist forces attacked Taiwan and finally defeated him there, but several of the forces fled to Burma and launched guerilla attacks to South China. Chiang’s party the ROC wanted to retake China again and established their bases in the Fuijian Islands. And has remained since like that. Sides On the KMT Side, there was the US. The US supplied mainly food and weaponry and soldiers to the KMT. They also had a specific advantage to knowing how to operate weapons and well trained soldiers (Chinese soldiers trained by the US) and also having advanced military strategies as well. But not having as much support of the people as the Communists. On the CPC side, it was the Soviet Union, this was one of the trump cards of the Communists, the KMT did not know at all about it. Also, theiy had more soldiers on their side, this was their ultimate weapon, they remained undefeated by having a good policy (at that time) and the support of the people. Causes People were living in great poverty in the beginning of the war so that they wanted a way out of poverty to gain equality. Right after Sun Yat Sen’s death there was a power struggle between the two parties and also several officials. Also in Shanghai, the KMT eradicated over 3000 CPC members. This was because Chiang Kai Shek knew he could never co-operate with the Communist Party because he wanted to be the central ruling power over China. For some short term causes: The society had too much Nationalist spirit, represented through the Chinese National Anthem. file:///C:/Users/joshua/Desktop/Chinese%20Civil%20War%20Photostory.wmv